November 28, 2005

Hide your website text content, e-mail address or original articles that you don't want ripped off with HideText. This site has an online tool that allows you to insert text into a field, set the characters, and voila! an image of your text you can now add to your blog or website.

I decided to try it, and here's the result using what I just typed:

You can enter up to 100K characters in one image (arial or verdana font only right now), and download the result and delete the image, or link to the image on their server.

This could really foil all those AdSense hungry content burglars from getting your stuff thru copy and paste. They _could_ steal the image, but most image stealers are too dumb to change the image file name if you had to search it out - and these have weird names unless you change them. If text images aren't your cup of tea, you could always use the excellent copyright cop - CopyScape.

The bonus idea is that Google isn't able to index your site content and slap you with a mistaken dupe content penalty, because some guy stole your content and is now benefitting from your hard work. Not being indexed isn't good for rankings, I know, but a clever person could create a mix of text and images to work around the issue.

November 26, 2005

For an easy way to compare Adsense vs Yahoo Publisher, try this Google AdSense vs. YPN PPC Compare Chart. Granted, the commentary contains the writer's own assessment and opinions, but I found some of them hilarious for being so forthcoming and downright blunt.

I 've been testing Yahoo a little lately, and it's been good or terrible results. The ad inventory is so limited and I end up with alot of run of site ads. I read somewhere it can take up to _2 weeks_ for Yahoo ads to target properly, but who wants to wait that long? When it was good I had $ clicks - although a lower CTR than Adsense. The CTR could be so much better with better ad matching. I have high hopes for them though, and maybe when they drop the beta, the ad quantity and targeting will improve.

November 18, 2005

I have been working on increasing my revenues and along with that I have made a concerted effort to increase the number of cheap keywords I target in Adwords. The problem is finding enough of these keywords to increase traffic without going broke (I did say "cheap").

I used the new Google keyword tool, and I regularly use my fellow CK-er, Steve's Adword Accelerator to find cheap Adwords keywords. AA Version 2 is rolling out in the next day or so, and it is better than ever with some unique features good for spying on the competition. I also did some research and looked for some free tools that do things I don't want to spend time doing manually. My working list (straight links):

1. Adword Accelerator - I use it regularly as I said :^) New pricing coming with the new version, but 100% guaranteed, and the new stuff it does you can't find anywhere else.

2. PPC Accelerator - Just bought Darren Yates' program (ironically another "accelerator") and for only $47 it's worth every penny -plus the bonus Ad Injector is handy, too.

4. Keyword Generator - Free tool that let's you take your favorite keyword group and replace a keyword with a list of synonyms and related keywords.

5. Keyword List Cleaner - Free Tool used to be on Webmasterbrain now called "Keyword Optimizer" on SEOchat - Cleans huge lists of duplicates and then alphabetizes :^)

6. Searchspell Typo - Still the best misspellings (really misspelled as if someone spelled by the way the word sounds - not only typos). FYI, misspellings almost always get more traffic than typos - Ignore the really weird spellings like "onleigne" for "online", etc. Searchspell hasn't been working everytime I use it, but great when it does. I think Joe told me the server has hiccups from time to time.

7. SEOtools Keyword Generator - Generates tons of keywords, including stemming if you want, i.e. rent, rental, renter, renting. Plus you can select the keyword order and matching options.

9. Local Adwords Keyword Generator - 5minutesite has a simple, but easy zip code based keyword list creator - plus a built in "permutator" or tool to mix the keywords into every variation. Love it!

10. Location Keyword Lists - I created lists for the US, UK, and Canada of towns, cities, counties, states and provinces. Just plain jane downloadable text files at TrafficGeni.us, ready for copy and paste! Combine the lists with a good permutator and you have thousands and thousands of new keywords for FREE. It's made a big difference in my Adwords campaigns.

November 17, 2005

If you want to have a selection of products on your pages, but are using the Chitika code to specify products by keywords, you can rotate the products you offer by the day of the week. Amitpatel_3001 wrote it out on the Chitika tips forums, and it can come in handy. This code can help any changes in your weekly traffic vs. weekend traffic to better target your users according to their focus.

Post this code just before your Chitika code and replace the keywords in it with keywords of your choice. Chitika will now serve ads based on day of the week keywords you've specified

November 14, 2005

Doing my regular morning read of Threadwatch and saw this post on Google Analytics. I am sure that the stats and ability to track both site users and ROI on Adwords campaigns in one place will be very good. In fact, some other recent tools Google released I've already raved about.

But as an AdSense Publisher, I can see where these better stats for Adwords publishers may mean:

1. Many more Adwords Publishers tracking their campaign results and ROI compared to those using conversion tracking in Adwords right now. Google Analytics will be a much better tool. More tracking means more AdSense Ads being scrutinized for ROI.

2. More accurate ROI tracking and reporting (Just an assumption as I haven't seen or tested Google Analytics yet), which means a higher likelihood of smart pricing kicking in on AdSense ad revenues to produce lower $ per click for publishers.

3. If you practice Adwords/Adsense arbitrage you may think twice about implementing Google Analytics because there's a possibility you may be causing lower AdSense Revenues for yourself! If your AdSense Ads don't produce a good enough ROI for your own Adwords Ads, you may be contibuting to less $ per click. I don't have a case study on this, but I have seen myself where I used conversion tracking on my Adwords campaigns and saw that for Adwords ads that have low ROI, my AdSense ads on the same topic had less than stellar returns (granted all the Adwords ads on my AdSense pages are from various advertisers).

Definitely, whether Google Analytics makes a dent in Adsense publisher revenues remain to be seen, but it's worth tracking and testing (and perhaps figuring out a way around the potential problem).

November 12, 2005

Thinking about making some tips lists, so I was poking around "My Documents" on my machine - where I keep all my best ideas for someday - and I found I had created a humungous list of free content search engines, audio, video, images, and text sources as well as "discovery keywords" that I compiled some months back. It's not a perfect list - might have thrown a few oddball things in there that interested me - but it's still alot of free stuff and some good places to go to find more content. It's the type of information sites where you start here and end up there somehow - like good old fashioned web surfing.

You know, I knew I spend alot of time online just reading and doing my own research, but this proves it. No wonder there's not enough hours in the day! Anyway, it's all on Trafficgeni.us and I also wrote some background info on the content and additional information you may want to know.

Next week I'll spend more time looking at documents I created, and wondering why the titles don't describe the contents very well. Who knows what else is in there.....

November 11, 2005

Sometimes I feel a love/hate conflict with Google, but I have to say that the new Adwords keyword tool (not that so-so Google Keyword Sandbox) rocks. I was starting to run out of ideas for new keywords for a particularly good Adwords campaign I have running, but now I've been having alot of fun and finding a whole new slew of keywords (with the help of a couple newly released tools - yeah!). The crazy thing is it's only going to make Google more $$ with all the extra keywords it generates. It's gratifying to find all those new keywords, but the more I find, the more I spend!

The funnest part - using competitors' sites in the Site-Related Keywords option. Found some good ideas with that, although I don't think those search results are keywords that competitors are using in their Adwords campaigns. It looks like it just creates a list of keywords based on the context of the page URL you enter - not unlike what Adsense ads do to produce a matching ad. We know Google is very good at contextual matching overall.

November 02, 2005

I was looking at Roseanne's very good Marketing Defined blog's Buy and Trade Websites post, and she was talking about some of her fellow Aussie bloggers, including Yaro Starek who has the Entrepreneur's Journey blog. Both Roseanne's and Yaro's posts have some helpful links and advice on buying websites for traffic or profit. His lengthy article on "How To Buy A Website And Flip It For Profit ?" is excellent info. Even if you don't plan to _buy_ a site, this information is helpful for a seller to place a valuation on their own site.

November 01, 2005

Just a quick announcement that TrafficGeni.us is now open and taking traffic idea submissions. We hope that this will be a great resource and a fun destination - seems like being a webmaster these days is too serious, and all about the money some days. This month's Prize is $100 cash via Paypal but - here's a hint - next month we will have prizes (plural) and they will be really, REALLY good - or we didn't want them!